


Collected Drabbles

by Rainfallen



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-04-02
Updated: 2013-01-20
Packaged: 2017-11-02 23:14:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/374441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rainfallen/pseuds/Rainfallen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of unrelated Arya + Gendry drabbles from my tumblr and livejournal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Training the girl

**Author's Note:**

  * For [elephant_eyelash](https://archiveofourown.org/users/elephant_eyelash/gifts).



> Written for [elephant_eyelash](http://archiveofourown.org/users/elephant_eyelash/pseuds/elephant_eyelash), who asked for Arya+Gendry+Kids

"No, no, no," Arya chided, a hint of warmth in her tone softening the words.  "Relax your arm and straighten your wrist.  Your sword is a part of your arm and your arm is a part of _you_.  Move together.  Smooth as summer silk."

Little Edra huffed and swung the wooden sword wide and wild from the shoulder.  Arya took a quick step back, just out of reach, and _tsked_.  The force from the swing and lack of impact spun the girl around, and the sword skittered a few feet away on the hard-packed earth.  Arya was certain she heard her daughter mutter a tiny, muffled "Bugger all" under her breath.  She chose to ignore it.   

" You aren't swinging a hammer,"  she said instead.  "Stab with the sword, slash if you must, but don't flail it around like a big clumsy oaf."

The scowl she received in answer was almost enough to make her lose control of her face.  Almost.   

"Father says a good warhammer is better than a sword," the girl said crossly.   "He says you can crush a man's armor or break his sword in half with one blow."

Arya looked over her shoulder.  Gendry leaned on the low fence that surrounded the training yard, watching them, with an apple in one hand and a stupid smirk on his face.  

"Any weapon can be useful," Arya allowed, speaking loud enough for her voice to carry over to him, "But you can't crush someone's armor if they're too fast for you to hit, no matter how big your warhammer is." 

Gendry bit into the apple and waggled his eyebrows at her. 

She shot him a glare laced with threats and promises, and turned back to their daughter.   She dropped her voice and said, low and conspiratorially, "The next time your father tells you that, ask him how good his warhammer was against a sword when I bested him at the Riverlands Tourney in the Victorious Year."

Her words were met with a grin that matched her own, and then Edra ran to scoop up the sword from where it had fallen.

"Now, again," Arya said, raising her tourney sword to block the blow.  "Quick as a snake. Good!"

 

 


	2. Harrenhal

He had been having a good dream when she woke him.  He couldn't quite remember it with her cold hand pressed hard against his mouth, just a swirl of muted colors and warmth and, somewhere distant, a voice saying his name all quiet and sweet.  And it was fading away completely even now, and she was still standing there expectantly with her stubborn jaw stuck out and a look in her eyes that told him she was not jesting, not even a little. 

What was she thinking anyway, trying to drag him into this?  Hadn't she already done enough?  And didn't she know he was _furious_ with her?  Yet there she was, brazen as could be, dragging him out of bed, asking him to steal a sword, asking him to run away, asking him for everything he had and still more that he didn't.

He had a good place here – he was safe as anyone was in the bloody decay of war, with a good warm bed and the best food he'd ever had and girls who smiled when he passed and for the first time in his life _potential_.   More than once Lucan had told him that he was good, that he had the makings to be much more than good if he kept at his craft.  Gendry knew it too, and it wasn't arrogance, just truth. 

But now Lucan was dead, and wasn't that her fault too?  If she hadn't – but it was no good, because there were a score of "if she hadn'ts" he could add to that list, and all of them ended up with him dead, dead at the holdfast, dead in the forest, dead in the storehouse if she hadn't been there, pushing him, tenacious and too smart for her own good.  

"You won't forget the swords?" she whispered again, insistent, and pushed up on her toes to make sure he heard her.  Something in her voice caught deep in his chest and he clenched his jaw hard.

 _Fuck_. 

His dream, his swords, his life – it was all hers anyway.  He would do as she asked and damn the cost, this time and every time.  She knew it and he knew it.  He had no choice.  Maybe he was just as stupid as she told him he was, at least where she was concerned.

 After what seemed like forever, he shook his head and swallowed hard. 

"No," he said at last, "I guess I won't."

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> quotes from ACOK paperback, pg 900


	3. It isn't his place

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was writing my paper and this happened somehow. I'm sorry. It isn't happy.

It's an accident, like everything that has ever happened with her. 

He isn't even supposed to be in the Godswood. It isn't his place. But the sun is shining bright white on the late spring snow, and the icicles hanging from the eaves around the winter town are dripping in a maddening staccato, and he craves the clean quiet air of the place, needs the stillness and solemnity to calm his racing mind. 

She drops down beside him (almost _atop_ him) from the thick branch of a tree above his head, and catches his arms to steady him when he stumbles back, startled. Arya laughs, and the sun glows golden in her wild hair, and for a moment he forgets. She thaws a little more every day they spend here ( _her home_ ), and right now she shines so brightly it almost hurts his eyes to see it. 

She leans against him with a casual intimacy unprecedented since the long journey north, when necessity and the harsh cold of night had driven them under the same bundle of furs. But this is different ( _she is different_ ), and as her fingers climb up his chest and twist into the curls at the back of his neck he wonders how he came to be here in this time and this place, of which neither are his. 

Gendry knows he'll get a crick in his neck if he stands like this for long, but he doesn't care, because _this isn't his place_ but surely he can have this much if only for a moment. It's as close as they've ever been on purpose, forehead to forehead, tips of noses just grazing, and his eyes are shut tight, because it's all that he wants and nothing that he can have and nothing has ever hurt so much. 

"Maybe I can find you a room in the castle," she says softly. Her fingers on his neck are impossibly warm. 

And there it is. She doesn't see it, can't see it, but nothing has ever been more clear. Gendry grew up surrounded by the hot press of the city, air thick with sweat and flies and the smells of a thousand rotten things, but he's never felt choked and smothered until this moment under weight of this inevitability. Nothing he ever does will make this right and acceptable in the eyes of her family, and nothing she ever says will ease the guilt that will come from tearing her down to lie in the weeds with him. 

It isn't his place. 

"I can't stay here," he says, and it comes out so low and hoarse he's afraid he'll have to say it again.

And he doesn't know if he can say it again. 

But she heard, because she's jerking back and staring at him with those wide, wide eyes, and for once her guard is completely down and he can read every nuance of the betrayal on her face. 

He wishes to every god he's ever believed in that he couldn't.

"You're leaving again," she says, and it isn't a question, and he hasn't heard her voice that dead since she washed up on the shores at the Saltpans two years ago. 

"Arya," he begins, and he'll never know what he was going to say next because she's gone, with only a jagged path broken into the snow to show her passing. 


	4. Forge Gossip

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> AU fluff in which Jon Arryn is still alive and Gendry is Robert's acknowledged bastard, apprenticing under Mikken at Winterfell. Arya is the very bane of his existence, as might be expected.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Extra drabble for [aneedleofmyown](http://aneedleofmyown.livejournal.com/) in the fifth [got_exchange](http://got-exchange.livejournal.com/68132.html).

"Sansa says Jeyne Poole wants to wed you."  
  
Gendry didn't look up, but continued to rhythmically draw a small whetstone over the axe balanced across his knees. Arya was perched on a barrel just inside the door of the smithy, her preferred spot when she came by with a message or just to watch him work. She had been blessedly quiet until this moment, with only the occasional soft snicking sound as she caught the apple she tossed in the air. Gendry had known as soon as he noticed her there, thoughtful and silent, that this visit would not go well for him. Visits from Arya rarely did. He waited until she made a noise of impatience to answer her.  
  
"Last week, Jeyne Poole wanted to wed Harwin. The week before, it was Greyjoy. If she had her way, she'd have a whole castle full of husbands and no thought of what to do with a-one of them."  
  
"She'd know what to with them," Arya said darkly. "And maybe she should. Maybe if she opened her legs for someone, she'd open her mouth less."  
  
"Arya!" He did look up at that, and knew his expression was as scandalized as his tone. "You shouldn't even know—"  
  
"I have  _brothers,_  Gendry," she said, for a brief moment the very image of her sister and utterly haughty in the way only a fourteen year old lady could be, soundly proving his theory that Arya behaved precisely how Arya wished to behave at any given moment, whether she be playing the lady or the wildling. "But they won't answer any of my questions. I just overhear them talking sometimes." Her face brightened in a smile just this side of calculating, and Gendry looked back down to the axe head and began sharpening again. He wondered if he should just drive the thing into his head now and have it done with.  
  
"You know all about it, don’t you?" Arya asked. "Theon said that you were up the skirts of that reeve's daughter from the Neck  _ages_  ago, and Mara in the kitchens told Bessa that --"  
  
"Seven hells, Arya!" he interjected desperately. "How do you even—" Gendry locked his jaw shut hard and tried to ignore her laughter and the spreading heat on his neck and at the tips of his ears. "I'm not talking about this with you. I like my head attached to my shoulders, thanks much."  
  
"Sansa says you'd never wed Jeyne because it's me you want." She took a bite out of the apple just as the whetstone fell from Gendry's hand and hit the dirt floor with a dull  _thunk._  The crunch of the fruit was loud in the sudden mortified stillness.  
  
"Since when do you listen to anything Sansa says anyway?" he asked after a moment, and bent to retrieve the stone and the shreds of his dignity with a forcibly steady hand.  
  
"Is it true?"  
  
He scoffed. "Does it matter?"  
  
She threw the apple across the smithy but he snatched it out of the air just before it struck him in the chest.  
  
"It matters to me," she told him, arms crossed.  
  
Gendry was not impressed. "I don't know why anyone would ever want to wed you. Your name brings more trouble than any nice common girl could dream up in a lifetime but you're still the worst lady I've ever heard of." He threw the apple back, and it bounced harmlessly on the support beam beside her head.  
  
She didn't try to trip him when he stomped past her, which was honestly a surprise, but she did call after him, "You didn't say no!" at a volume half the bloody castle could hear.


End file.
